


Terrible/Wonderful

by Lynds



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Cutting, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, M/M, Protective Tony Stark, Recovery, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Thoughts, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 17:16:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18124178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lynds/pseuds/Lynds
Summary: Loki has some terrible coping mechanisms. Tony wishes he could help him, but recovery isn't a linear process.





	Terrible/Wonderful

**Author's Note:**

> This fic does have some graphic depictions of self harm in the form of cutting. Please don't read it if that triggers you at all. Loki is getting better, but he's not all the way there yet.

“Loki,” said Tony, and Loki knew this was serious. Tony never called him by his name. “Clint told me you… you…”

Loki put the pan back on the hob and tried to relax his shoulders. They stayed up around his ears. “Fucking traitor.”

“He was worried.”

Loki knew. He wasn’t even mad, not really. He’d have done the same if he’d found Clint cutting himself, slashing and scratching, his face curled up in self-loathing and anger. He was just disappointed in himself for being seen. “I wasn’t trying to commit suicide,” he said. “Contrary to popular opinion, cutting isn’t a gateway drug to full-on wrist-slashing.”

“I think it is, actually,” Tony said awkwardly.

“I don’t want to kill myself,” Loki laughed. “I just want to _be dead_ , doesn’t everyone?” He grins and shakes his head at his own joke. “I wouldn’t actually do it. Anyway, they barely even leave scars. They’re shallow.”

“Why are you being so flippant?” Tony asked on a sob, and Loki turned, surprised. Tony was crying, tears pouring down his face and gulping air. 

Loki dropped his wooden spoon and turned to gather Tony up into his arms, hushing and kissing him and stroking circles into his back. “Darling, I’m sorry, it’s OK, don’t cry, love.”

“Please, promise me you won’t do it again! When you feel that way, come to me?”

Loki was nodding, anything to make it better for him, because Tony shouldn’t be crying over _him_. Tony was the sweet, funny, generous man who’d been through so much and just wanted to make everyone happy, how could he put any more pressure on Tony’s shoulders?

Tony just clung onto him and cried harder. “You’re not going to, are you? Oh God, Loki, how can I help? Please tell me what I can do… how could I have missed this, I’m so sorry.”

Loki held him tightly, squeezing his eyes shut. “I’m sorry, love.”

“Will you come to me? Please?”

The word _yes_ was on his lips, the pacifying lie. But something blocked it, something took the breath from it and held his tongue. _Lie_ , he thought, gritting his teeth, _tell him you’ll ask for help and make him feel better - can’t you even do that?_

“Why?” Tony whispered into his neck. “Why can’t you come to me? I’ll listen, I swear, I know I’m not good at that but—“

“No! God, no, Tony, it’s not… it’s not you!”

“Shit, oh my God, I’m making this about me again, I’m so sorry, I just want you to—“

“I don’t deserve it,” Loki said all at once, the honesty coming out in a rush, and he winced. “I mean… when I feel like that. I don’t… I don’t believe… that anyone would want to hear it. I should be able to control myself, I should be better. I should stop being so stupid and dramatic and selfish and… fuck. I’m sorry, it’s so stupid. I’ll try, OK? I’m sorry.”

Tony pulled away and panic raced through Loki, because he should have known, should have realised that Tony would figure it out some day, how little Loki deserved him. He forced himself to not be pathetic, let Tony go without a fight, and pulled back himself, wrapping his arms around his chest, chin up and defiant. He wouldn’t let anyone know they’d broken Loki Odinson, not even the love of his life.

But instead of backing away in disgust and taking himself away like any sensible person should, Tony just put his arms _back_ around Loki, over the top of his own crossed arms so he was now the comforter. “Oh baby,” Tony said, his voice cracking as he pulled him close, trying to wrap him up completely in love. Loki wanted to laugh and tease him for trying it when he was so much shorter than Loki, but it was surprisingly effective. Loki found himself burying his face in Tony’s neck, breathing in the comfort of him. “I want to hear everything,” he promised. “I want to hear when you make me laugh, and I want to hear you being clever, and I want to hear your love… but I also want your pain too. Is that selfish?”

Loki wrapped his arms loosely around Tony’s waist and sighed into him, shaking his head.

“I want the ugly parts of you,” Tony said. “I want your anger and your darkness and bitterness. I know it’s a lot… I already have your wonderful, will you trust me with your terrible? Please? Give me a chance?”

Loki’s eyes prickled and he nodded once more. And he hoped that when the time came, some part of him would remember this promise.

***

He clenched his fist around the blade. He tightened it until the muscles stood out on his forearms and the blade trembled, the hilt digging into his palm. The skin on his arm was blank, untouched, the previous scratches long gone. It called to him, like a drug, _do it, watch the lines appear, beads of blood rise to the surface. Do it._

He slapped the knife onto the table and snatched up his phone, furious. Texted Tony. “Excuse me, I would like to return my emotions, these ones don’t work.” Then he picked the knife back up.

Fucking idiot. Spineless, snivelling, useless little bitch. Why would he bother Tony with this? If he turned up his nose and laughed at him or pushed him away Loki would only have himself to blame. It was just such a fucking joke, he never even cut himself deep enough to scar! He pressed the knife onto his skin, and the phone rang.

The knife made a clatter as it fell, as Loki grabbed for the phone, snatching it up, anxiety making him unnaturally fast. “Yeah?”

“So here’s what I don’t understand about moths,” Tony said, his voice loud down the line. “They’re like butterflies, right? Only boring! Like, all their colours are really boring. But then they’re the ones which spread their wings and show it off, and butterflies are all like ‘ooh non non monsieur, you may not see my colours,’ you know, the fucking colours they’ve evolved to _have_. Why?”

Loki let out a sharp laugh. “What are you talking about?”

“I dunno,” he said, and Loki could hear the shrug in his tone. “Whatcha doing?”

Loki looked at the knife. “Nothing much.” 

“Wanna meet for lunch?” Something crashed in the background and Tony swore.

“Are you in the lab?” Loki frowned.

“Yeah, but it’s cool, I’m teaching the bots to recognise colour. Hey, maybe that’s why I started thinking about moths.”

Loki’s chest clenched and he couldn’t stop a little smile curling his lips. “I thought you didn’t take your phone into the lab.”

“Yeah, well, I changed that rule. Now I just silence all calls and messages except yours. Good thing too, otherwise you’d have missed this important information about moths. So, are you coming to lunch? Because I didn’t bring any with me, please save me, baby?”

A smile blossomed over Loki’s face. “Sure,” he laughed. “See you in twenty.”

The knife lay forgotten on the table as the door clicked shut.

***

Loki looked at the skin of his arm. He clenched his fist and the tendons moved under the pale skin, shifting and rippling and unbroken. Loki wanted to see it red and torn up and open and ripped and he took a deep breath, his panic singing in his chest.

He sent a text. “I need something,” he wrote, then deleted it. “I need you,” he wrote, and then deleted it. “Please,” he wrote, and deleted it.

He took a deep breath. “Hey,” he wrote at last. “What are you up to?”

He pushed his phone away and the self-loathing rolled into him in waves. He couldn’t win against it, he thought, exhausted. When he tried to reach out to Tony, ask for help like he’d promised, the voice called him pathetic, weak, laughable. When he tried to stay strong and not need Tony’s help, be casual instead, he was pathetic, a liar, stupid and not dedicated to his own recovery. He felt sick. He felt panicked, his emotions whirling and stormy under his skin, and he wanted to cut them out, cut it all out, cut and mark and _end_.

Tony called, and for a moment he considered not answering. He picked up the phone. “Hey,” he said, unable to coax up any enthusiasm. He sounded dull and emotionless, but he knew if he allowed any emotion at all to shine through, it would be too much. He was always too much. Why was he _so much_ all the time?

“Hey babe,” said Tony. “My board are complete fucking idiots.”

Loki frowned. “Why? What happened?”

“So I just got out of the meeting, and get this? They think we should close down the alternative energy R&D department, they say there’s not enough money in it. Can you believe that? Climate change deniers! In _my_ boardroom!”

Loki leaned back, his chair creaking. “What did you say?”

“I’m inviting them on a tour of Resnick - I mean, I know it’s in Caltech, ugh, but if an MIT student can suck it up and work with Caltech, they’ll _know_ it’s serious, right?”

Loki smiled, and listened, and put the knife back in the drawer. And by the time Tony had asked him to meet up for lunch, he’d almost forgotten about the marks he wanted to make on himself.

***

Tony lifted Loki’s wrist from the pillow. Loki flinched and tried to pull his arm inwards, hide the evidence of his weakness. He’d spent hours yesterday pulling his sleeve low over his arm, imagining Tony’s sneer, how he’d drop Loki’s arm like a diseased thing and give up on him, because that’s all he deserved, all he’d ever deserved. Of course he’d forgotten to keep it hidden while he slept.

Tony’s fingers tightened on his wrist, he could feel them tense around his bones. Loki closed his eyes in defeat and let him see. It looked like a tussock of red grass, dozens of shallow, angry slashes close and crossing over each other on his pale skin. He’d stared at it for ages after he’d done it, watched the blood well, the flesh swell and flush, and then he’d covered it with his sleeve and considered rubbing salt into it to punish himself. Now he just felt empty. He pulled his knees to his chest, his right arm hugging over himself while Tony inspected his left. He closed his eyes and waited for the judgement.

Tony’s lips and beard against his skin made his eyes snap open. He was kissing his wrist above the patch of slashed skin, and then below it, then beside it. “Does it hurt?” he asked softly, stroking the tendons. 

Loki didn’t know what to say. At last he nodded.

Tony kissed him again on the wrist. Then the palm of his hand. “Poor baby,” he said, stroking his hair.

“I did it to myself,” Loki blurted, because how could he take Tony’s sympathy? For this? When he was the one who’d been so stupid?

“I know,” said Tony simply, and continued to kiss him, to stroke the undamaged skin next to it so he didn’t aggravate the wounds.

Loki’s eyes burned. He pressed his face to the pillow, clenched his fist around the kiss, and cried. Tony gathered him into his arms and loved him through it all.

***

Loki touched the knife with his fingertips. He ached to sink it into his skin, wished for a pain that came from outside of him. He clenched his fists. Pulled out his phone. Took a deep breath. “Stop me,” he texted, and deleted it. “I need you,” he texted, and deleted that too. 

He gritted his teeth. He shouldn’t be so weak! Why was he bothering Tony with shit like this? Couldn’t he handle it? And what if Tony was busy? What if he didn’t reply? At some point he was guaranteed to get sick of Loki’s bullshit. He could imagine Tony glancing at the text, rolling his eyes and carrying on with what he was doing.

And if Tony wasn’t right there with his phone? If he didn’t hear the text alert go off? Loki would think he was ignoring him when actually it would be totally innocent. Loki could be sitting there hating him, needing him, blaming him when he cut into his own skin, and it wouldn’t be Tony’s fault at all. Better not to risk it. Better not to ask in the first place.

But Tony had asked if Loki trusted him. And he _did_ , honestly, he’d never trusted anyone the way he trusted Tony. But with this? Was this really what Tony wanted? Would Tony get bored?

“I feel like shit,” he texted at last. “I’m going to bed.”

He covered himself with the duvet, pulling it right over his face. Just that little concession, that little admission that this was something like an illness made him feel at once like crying and like he was being comforted. 

Tony rang, and Loki picked up, his limbs feeling like lead, hopeless and empty. “Hey,” Tony said, his voice soft and sympathetic, and Loki closed his eyes, tears running down the bridge of his nose, the side of his face, into the pillow. “How you doing?”

He took a deep breath, unable to stop it from shuddering. Tony made a sympathetic noise on the line. “Honey,” he said, his voice like a hug down the line. “Oh, baby, I’m gonna be there in a minute, OK?”

“Don’t,” Loki begged, feeling horrible for interrupting his day. “I’m… I shouldn’t have…”

“No, don’t say that! OK, fine, I won’t come right now, but… thank you?”

“What?”

The line crackled, like Tony was scratching at his head, or his face, flustered. “Thank you for trusting me? I just… are you OK?”

Loki sniffed and nodded. “Yeah,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.

“Are you in bed?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you all tucked up in the duvet?”

“Yeah,” said Loki, closing his eyes.

“OK, the duvet’s gonna do my job for now,” Tony said. “I’ll finish this job, and then I’m coming home - and don’t tell me not to, you’re not interrupting if I finish up first, right?”

“I’m so sorry,” Loki said, unable to stop his face from contorting into a rictus, tears now pouring from him. “I should have been stronger.”

“You are strong, Lokes,” Tony said, his voice unbearably kind and gentle, and it hurt, because Loki didn’t deserve such things, he needed to be nagged and whipped and ordered into line, made better because he was so useless. “You called me even though you didn’t want to. You called me because I asked you to, right? Because you want to trust me? Thank you. So much. You have no idea how much I appreciate that.”

Loki curled into a ball and sobbed. He could hear Tony talking to him, gentle, kind words that hurt so fucking bad. He cried to the sound of his lover’s voice until the storm left him empty and unable to breathe through his nose, his head aching and wooly.

“I love you so much,” he heard Tony say, his voice soft and shaking with his own emotion. “I wish I could make all of this better, I wish I was healthy too, I wish I knew how to save you. Maybe if I was normal and not a fuck-up I’d be better for you.”

“You’re the best for me,” said Loki, his voice rough and torn apart by tears.

Tony huffed over the phone. “How you doing now, love?”

Loki just sighed.

“I know I said I’d finish this, but--”

“No,” said Loki, shame spiking through him once more. “Please. Please finish your work, I don’t want to be a burden.”

“You’re not,” Tony said firmly. “OK, I’ll finish, but only because I don’t want you to feel worse. I’ll be over as soon as I’m done. It’ll be my reward for getting this shitty paperwork done.”

“Some reward,” Loki snorted.

“The only reward I care about,” Tony said. “Can you close your eyes and stay in bed for me ‘til I get there? You’ve got that bottle of water on the bedside table, yeah?”

“Yeah,” said Loki.

“OK,” Tony said, and Loki heard the line crackle, like his face had moved, like he’d nodded to himself. “Close your eyes, baby. Sleep, and I’ll be there with you as soon as I can.”

“OK,” Loki whispered, closing his eyes. He was only obedient for one person, the only person who’d never demanded it from him. 

He slept, he must have done. Because the next thing he felt was strong arms around his middle, cool cotton against the silk blend of his shirt. Tony kissed him on the back of his neck. “Hey.”

“Hi,” he said, his voice dry and croaky. 

“I love you,” said Tony.

“Why?” Loki blurted, almost laughing. “That’s not fishing for compliments - why on earth would you even like me?”

“You’re funny, you’re fiercely loyal, you’re the smartest person I know, and you’re brave.”

“I’m not brave,” said Loki.

“You are,” Tony said softly into his hair. “You took a leap of faith.” He ran his fingers down Loki’s wrist. “I asked you to trust me, and you did. That must’ve been terrifying.”

Loki turned his hand to grip Tony’s arm, pulling him closer. He knew Tony found it just as difficult as Loki to trust anyone, both of them damaged, possibly beyond repair, by their family and pseudo-family. “I do trust you,” Loki whispered, and it was like jumping over the edge of a ravine into the darkness. “I’ve never trusted anyone but you.”

Tony squeezed him tighter. “I… I trust you too. With my dark as well as my light.”

“My terrible and my wonderful,” said Loki, and kissed him on the palm of his hand.


End file.
